The rise of cheap renewable energy is starting to upend the bottom lines of fossil-fuel companies all over the world. Initially, that was why so many of them instinctively fought the newfangled technologies. Increasingly, it’s why many of them are shifting strategy, hustling to try to profitably harness the wind and the sun.
In the latest sign of this sea change, Equinor, the Norwegian oil-and-gas giant formerly known as Statoil, will announce today that it plans to pour money into an approximately $180 million investment fund focused on battery and related technologies. That tech is intended to spread the use of renewables by allowing them to be stored in ways that make economic sense.
Equinor’s announcement comes less than three weeks after Norway’s government said the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, which manages a mind-boggling $1 trillion in assets, would sell off holdings in oil-and-gas exploration and production companies.
